


Brightest Heart, Darkest Night

by idanato



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Bitter, Doomed Love, Drama, Emotional Hurt/No Comfort, F/M, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Post-War, inspired by paired ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 09:33:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30137514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idanato/pseuds/idanato
Summary: In everything he did, Hubert burned too bright. Dorothea had seen it a hundred times before; stars that burned the brightest burned out the quickest, leaving only darkness in their wake.[Dorobert Weekend Day 1:DRAMA!]
Relationships: Dorothea Arnault/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8
Collections: Dorobert Weekend





	Brightest Heart, Darkest Night

The carriage ride home to Enbarr did not provide much to look at through the darkened windows, and so Dorothea kept her eyes on her partner in the shadows. Hubert’s legs were a touch too long for this particular vehicle they’d rented, and his knees kept accidentally brushing against hers. It was the closest they’d been all evening.

They were frequently invited to parties like the one they’d just left, but they rarely spent any time together at such affairs. Dorothea was invariably the special guest of the night, and it was often implied by the invitation that she was expected to perform to earn her meal. Hubert was welcomed only as a courtesy as her patron, and usually she had beg her hosts to allow her to bring him along.

Dinner tonight was at the invitation of the Baron Rasalka at his country estate. Following a halfway decent supper, the guests gathered around the harpsichord while the Baron’s niece did a passable job playing. Dorothea sang not as if she was humoring a child’s best effort with a new instrument, but as if she was at an opening night at the Mittelfrank. She captivated the room, capturing everyone’s attention save for the one person she wished would look upon her.

While Dorothea stole the spotlight with a song or three, Hubert slipped into the great big shadow that her presence cast. She made sure all eyes were on her as Hubert excused himself and made for a private study where Baron Rasalka most certainly would not want him snooping. He slid back into the sitting room as her performance concluded and politely clapped as if he’d been there for the entire thing.

As the dinner party migrated into the parlor for drinks and games, Dorothea flirted and bantered as little casual secrets found their ways into her ears. People wanted to impress the opera star, and it was shocking what sorts of things they would drop right into her lap. Dorothea took the secrets freely offered while Hubert hunted those in difficult to reach places.

Hubert’s eyes always caught hers at the worst possible times. For instance, Hubert watched from across the room when a minor Viscount was leaning in intimately close to whisper in Dorothea’s ear about how he’d made his fortune during the war. He was looking for a wife to share those riches with, although with the way his hands were wandering onto her hips she suspected he was more interested in a mistress than a marriage. Dorothea let out her most enthused laugh, a true test of her acting ability, and told him she’d consider his offer. An invitation to his estate would likely follow within a fortnight. The more vile the suitor, the more Hubert would implore her to accept their attentions.

Dorothea’s gentlemen callers had an awful habit of being exposed for corruption and other sordid conspiracies not long after they began courting her. Sometimes they just outright disappeared without a trace or so much as a goodbye. She apparently only attracted the most awful of men, the most dangerous of which was sitting with her in this carriage. The only issue was that he was not interested in her, not in the way she wished. She didn’t need Hubert to storm over and save her from the Viscount, but it would be nice to get a rise out of him when her suitors practically had their hands up her skirts and their eyes down her bodice. Whatever he felt about it, if anything at all, was always obscured by the shadows he clung to like a shield.

“I found some letters of note, linking the Baron with Lord Arundel,” said Hubert in the barest whisper to break the silence in the carriage. “We’re getting close to the end now, they are running out of places to hide.”

Dorothea had no response, and instead looked out the darkened window at the nothingness. Her own hurt reflection stared back at her with a sting in her eyes. Finally she found some barbed words to throw back at him, “Well I’m glad my presence could bring _some_ satisfaction to you tonight.” It brought her little triumph in saying that out loud and yet she had a feeling she would manage to say worse before this ride was finished.

His knee brushed against hers once more, “I am sorry to have missed your songs.”

How many years had they been at this little act since the war ended? Dorothea was sure it was the first time he’d ever shown a shred of remorse for skipping her little rehearsed diversions. “I’ve just come to assume you must not enjoy the sound of my voice,” said Dorothea without sparing him so much as a glance. Yes, she wished for once he would stay and listen to her sing instead of slipping away to work, but Hubert was not one to idle time on art or beauty. He was not one to idle time with her. There was always someone else to chase after, or a better conversation to eavesdrop on than the one they were having.

Again his knee brushed against hers, and she could not help but wonder if this time it had been on purpose. “I admit I do not have much of an ear for music, but that does not mean I do not enjoy listening to you,” said Hubert. There was a small break in his voice, she’d managed to throw him ever so slightly off kilter. “It’s still early, would you like to join me for drinks or—”

“Or what?” Her voice was sharp and raised. Dorothea turned her frown towards him, “What do you expect, a private performance?”

It was Hubert’s turn to pick a darkened window to face, “My apologies Dorothea. It was not my intention to upset you this evening.”

She wasn’t angry; she was spurned. “Once upon a time you convinced me to walk Edelgard’s path with you, but these days I feel like we’re both walking it alone,” whispered Dorothea, the truth spilling out like so many pent up secrets. She could barely see him and so she could not see how he felt about what she had to say. She feared he felt nothing at all about her.

Hubert studied her from the very darkness she felt so trapped by, “Do you wish to stop our outings?”

“No Hubie, I just, I thought this was something you and I would be doing together. That’s the only reason I said yes all those years ago,” said Dorothea as the street lights of Enbarr greeted them on their return.

Both of his knees now touched hers as Hubert leaned forward to let the light catch his face for her to see. “Men who court you often meet unfortunate ends,” he whispered as they neared her home. “What do you think will become of me if I would try?”

Dorothea folded her arms and leveled her gaze at him, “You might risk falling in love with me.”

Hubert’s eyes settled on her knees as if weighed down by too many long hours spent hunting enemies he could only see the silhouettes of. “Then I am afraid I am already lost.”

Dorothea stared at him in silence at the admission. She knew she was going to collect a few secrets tonight but she had not expected to get any out of him. The rented carriage rolled to a halt in front of her address. Dorothea pursed her lips as she looked at him and then pretended to relent, “Fine. We can have a drink and I’ll sing for you, but one song is all you get Hubert.” It was another performance, but this time for the confused footman opening the carriage door.

The room Hubert rented for Dorothea in the boarding house was spacious but it was still a single room in a larger place shared with many. In some ways it was just like the small space she rented in his heart; she had her little area but she had to share it with the crown, the empire, and his never ceasing fight against the night. She constantly feared the threat of eviction.

This address was another step on the ladder she’d always thought she’d been climbing, from street, to the bones of the opera house rafters, to a communal dressing room, and then a star’s quarters. Now Dorothea wondered if she’d stopped upon a landing, and if there was no where up from here.

Hubert had a private residence, not a grand estate in the country, but a proper noble house in the city. She did not go there, no one went there, and there were rumors the staff was extremely small and no guests were ever entertained. When she asked around, even their shared friends had never been inside.

So if they were going to meet, they did so at the boarding house. Dorothea could not sing an operatic solo here, especially not at this hour, and Hubert had to know that when he’d agreed to her invitation. She poured him a drink into a delicate glass that had been a gift from some admirer at some point in time. She barely remembered who, but she suspected she probably didn’t like them all that much. It was just like an out of touch noble to give someone a precious frivolous ornament when what they really needed was food or shelter.

“What was that supposed to mean back in the carriage?” asked Dorothea as she finished lighting her candles. Here they would be bathed in as much light as she could afford to burn because she could not suffer in the dark any longer.

“It meant what it meant,” said Hubert without elaboration. “I am not cryptic with you of all people.”

“Why, do you think I am too simple to understand your riddles?” demanded Dorothea, as she wondered why he would insult her like this.

Hubert stared at her with an impassive look in his eyes. “It means I am honest with you.”

“Fine, if you are so very honest with me, then tell me where it is we are heading,” whispered Dorothea. “Does this dance just go on and on until we are both spent? What becomes of me when I am old and no longer an attractive lure to your prey? Will you cast me aside for someone with greater utility?” How long could she possibly keep doing this? At some point a desirable young maiden became a reviled spinster.

“I will never ‘cast you aside’, your job would but shift to suit your strengths. Although, I am having difficulty picturing you so very old and decrepit that no one would be interested,” he said as he looked her over with an ill timed smirk.

Dorothea did not stoop to accept the compliment. “If you are just going to keep me stuck in this perpetual stasis, I would prefer to pursue a better offer. I have already wasted too much time singing for your benefit. If you truly love me, you would not keep doing this to me.” The hurt she felt could only be balanced by the pain she could deal back at him.

The silence that was returned felt so heavy it might snuff out every candle in the room. Finally Hubert cleared his throat to speak. “I know you will not wish to hear this, but I cannot marry you,” said Hubert as he slowly took in the way she’d arranged her rented room to avoid looking upon her face. “No one wants to share secrets with or court a woman whose husband is the Marquis von Vestra.”

“Well that’s not true, they might even see it as a challenge,” said Dorothea as her eyes refused to leave him. To steal the lovely wife from beneath the nose of a most hated political rival might even spur them on.

Hubert shook his head to dismiss the idea. “I can increase your allowance if you’re feeling insecure about your means, and perhaps it is time I tell you that you are the only person in my will. You get all of it in the event that something happens to me. I’ve written it so they don’t even need to find a body—”

Dorothea stared at him in disbelief that he could say such things as if they were supposed to comfort her. “I don’t want your wealth, I want you. I don’t understand how you profess to love me and yet never do anything about it.”

“What _can_ I do?” Finally a note of passion and a pang of pain in his voice had revealed themselves to her.

For having no strings between them they were both completely tangled in the other, unable to move and unable to get free. Their love was a slowly tightening noose and the floor might fall out beneath them at any moment.

“Touch me, kiss me, show me,” begged Dorothea as she clung upon his waistcoat. “Do not leave me so alone all the time, I cannot bear this distance. If I must appear to be your kept mistress, at least give me the satisfaction of the closeness that should come with that.”

“I fear I will be your ruin,” whispered Hubert as his gloved hand traced along her jaw.

“You already are,” confessed Dorothea as she pressed herself against him, desperate to know that he was still here and not already slipped away.

In everything he did he burned too bright. Perhaps that was why he cloaked himself in darkness to conceal that ferocity. Whether in a battle or in a quiet fight, and now making love to her, Hubert gave to much and took too little. Dorothea had seen it a hundred times before. Stars that burned the brightest burned out the quickest, leaving only darkness in their wake.

There was too much of everything. Too much tongue in his kisses, too much pressure from his fingers on overly sensitive skin, and far too much cock seeking something buried deep inside her. There was too much and then there was nothing, and Dorothea was left feeling like she was cradling not a man but a smoldering ember against her breast. Hubert did not understand moderation. He gave himself completely to one thing until he could not give any more.

Dorothea, in contrast, was like a rose bush that sank her thorns into whatever came near in a desperate effort to keep them from leaving her. The more he struggled to free himself the deeper her thorns would go and the more blood she would draw. Yet she had not caught herself a broken crow content to call her home. She had snared herself the Marquis von Vestra, and he was the type of man would burn out so completely in his fight that he would disappear without leaving so much as a body for her to mourn. His fire would readily consume her too, and perhaps it had already caught her. When their dark world was finally rendered silent, all that would be left of them would be fragile ash mimicking their forms and waiting for the wrong moment to crumble.


End file.
